They rolled up to Winston McGill High’s front gate. A chainlink fence had been
added to try to keep the students from skipping and heading off campus. Someone had already chopped a hole in it for anyone who thought they could sneak out.
“Leave the car to block this entrance,” said Harry. He got out. “We want them to have to force their way through the fence so we can buy time to kill as many as we can.”
“Got it,” said John. “There’s not a lot of cover here.”
“I know,” said Harry. “If you stay in the car, you’ll be a sitting duck. We need to get you some gear.”
“Okay,” said John. “What do you think I need?”
“Rifle,” said Harry. He handed over the one he had been carrying. “It’s single shot but you can voice activate the type of bullets you want. Armor piercing will wreck a mofo. The scope is good for day or night.”
He tapped the top of the car. Boxes appeared. He looked at them, nodding at the labels.
“Boxes of ammo for the rifle,” said Harry. He started listing the contents as he pushed them across to his friend. “Handgun with the same type of ammo but smaller caliber. Also single shot. Five magazines. A vest to help in case they try to stab you in the torso. Mana scanner to let you know when the xenos breach and start heading your way. Radio to call me. Helmet to protect your noggin with a faceshield. Vibrating knife as a last resort. First aid kit if you do go down but the bees save you. You might be able to keep yourself alive until I can help out. And a box of variable grenades for the launcher. And a rig to carry everything.”
Harry looked around. He frowned at the huge parking lot and the two story building in the middle of it. He could definitely see more than two exits just on the front. The xenos could hit them and flood the lot before he could do anything about it.
He bought his own gear, building his radio and scanner in his helmet. He pulled on the vest and rig before he got new weapons he loaded up and put in place. He noted John was making sure he had a grip on the firearms once he had the other equipment on.
The vest might save his life in the next few minutes.
“Four of you guys back up John,” said Harry. “Anything that gets close goes down. I’m not explaining how he got killed to his wife. All the rest of you patrol the outside. Concentrate fire on targets. Try to keep the xenos in the lot. If they get out, let them go. We have to hold the gate until it shuts. Then we chase the rest. Savvy?”
The bees buzzed in understanding. The majority began circling the school, keeping an eye on the doors and windows. Four, two were John’s original bodyguards, waited on top of the car.
Harry used a couple of rifle rounds on the main door to get inside. His mana scanner pointed him somewhere toward the center of the building. The heavy duty reading told him the gate was forming as he ran toward it.
He needed backup if he wanted to keep his new feet. He looked at the quartermaster menu. He summoned a hive and ran to a stairwell. He looked up and down. The scanner said he had to go up. He ran up the stairs and shoved through the door. He dropped the hive under a bank of lockers before running on.
Now all he had to do was hold until his army held the line and eradicated the enemy.
How hard could that be?
A door to a classroom burst open. Something with too many tentacles got shot three times with explosive rounds that blew it apart. A glow within the room told him that the gate was in full residence.
“It’s still small,” said Nick. “We should be able to stop the advance until help
arrives.”
“Let’s do what we can until the drones get here,” said Harry.
He summoned a flash and threw it through the gate. He followed that with half of his box of ammunition set to high explosive. Then he threw an antenna and a hive across to give him a location and forward warriors to use when he could.
He put the new distance reader in his pocket next to the old one. He could try to triangulate later. Now he had to make sure his enemies were dead.
Things emerged from the gate. They flung natural weapons at him. He used the wall as a shield as he let them have it with the rifle.
The first drone appeared with the particle gun at the ready. Ribbons of light reached for the gate. Popping from the beams hitting something liquid reached him as he waited.
“The gate seems to be closing, Harry,” said Nick. “The reading seems to be dimming. Maybe there wasn’t enough for a full gate.”
“Can I nuke one of these gates?,” asked Harry.
“Sure if you want to get caught in the back blast because the gate didn’t close fast enough,” said Nick. “And the possibility of sending a plasma jet through the city, killing any number of civilians that you are not supposed to be setting on fire and turning to ash.”
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“You make it sound so much worse than what I was thinking,” said Harry.
“We’ll talk about the use of nuclear weapons on your hundredth day of operation,” said Nick. “Until then, I don’t think you’re responsible enough to use them.”
“I’m plenty responsible,” said Harry. “I haven’t ever nuked anyone that needed it before now.”
“And you never will the way you’re going,” said Nick. “I don’t like this small gate. It seems strange, a change in strategy.”
“I got movement on the ground floor, Harry,” said John. “Looks like ten hostiles. They aren’t coming out of the school yet.”
“How did they get behind me?,” asked Harry. “I got the gate bottled up.”
“They got out before we got here, or there is a second gate somewhere else on the premises,” said Nick.
“All right,” said Harry. “It’s time to get serious.”
More drones arrived to add their firepower to scouring the gate. He checked the rest of the room for anything camping before he rushed to the ring. He checked the menu from the quartermaster for anything he could use to close the gate faster.
He found something that would attack aliens in a gas form. It came in a grenade that he could cook off, or shoot. He loaded one into the underbarrel. He shot that across the threshold. He wasn’t ready to step on another planet without any life support, or protection.
“I’m going to put up a barrier and get downstairs to deal with the bottom floor,” said Harry into his radio. “Are they trying to get out?”
“They’re not coming my way,” said John. “Maybe out the back? It looks like they are either waiting, or trying to decide what they want to do. If they were all in one spot, I would try to grenade them.”
“Hold what you got until they come at you,” said Harry. “There might be two gates. If there is another gate here, they might be waiting on the rest of whatever is coming across before they try to break out. If that is what they are doing, you might be in trouble at the gate.”
“I’m ready to fall back,” said John.
More drones appeared as Harry set up an automatic gun. He tuned the AI to only shoot the enemy. Then he put up a wall of light to stall anything that made it to the gun to keep it from firing at anything on the other side of the gate.
He left the automatic gun doing its work as he headed back to the stairs. He thought about things. Where would a second gate be?
He looked around with the mana scanner as he stood in the stairwell. He decided to go up. Once he had eliminated the top floor, he could search the bottom. Then he could deal with the xenos and the second gate.
“How rare are double gates?,” said Harry as he worked his way down the hall. Every door got pushed open, every room was checked. The other gate threw his scanner off some by glowing through the floor. He paused at the smashed down door to the boy’s bathroom.
“One in a billion,” said Nick. “I don’t like this at all.”
“All right,” said Harry. He counted the drones that had grouped up around him. He had no doubt others were at the other gate, blazing away at unseen targets. “We clear the bathroom, we set up a defense point on the gate like the one downstairs. Then we go down and think about what we want to do with the xenos down on the bottom floor. Clear?”
The bees buzzed in agreement.
Harry turned around the edge of the door frame. The gate floated off the floor in the middle of the room. Something flew out of the stall to his left. Ten beams of lightning wrapped around it and cut it to pieces. Other beams whipped something in the opposite corner. One blew up a urinal by mistake.
“Don’t worry about that,” said Harry. “I’m sure that urinal was too dangerous to live.”
The bee buzzed back in agreement.
Harry went through his now familiar routine of throwing a hive over the edge of the threshold of the gate after trying to blind them with a flash. He threw another antenna and put the receiver in a pouch on his equipment rig. He bought time for the new fabricator with the rest of the box magazine’s ammo on his rifle.
He hurriedly reloaded as the bees shot their guns into the gate. He charged the rifle and looked around. He needed to do something to stop the door from vomiting the enemy on top of him while he tried to come up with a strategy.
“The gate is growing, Harry,” said Nick. “It shouldn’t be growing now that it’s
reached the maximum size.”
“Is this the maximum size?,” asked Harry. He leafed through his weapon catalogue again. There had to be something he could use to put a stop to this.
“I would have thought so,” said Nick. “This deep, small groups of saboteurs always seemed like their strategy. Maybe the strategy is changing.”
“What we need is to do something to keep the school as intact as we can while making sure this thing doesn’t get big enough to drop a kaiju on the city,” said Harry. “We don’t know what closes a gate, but we can deny the enemy a resource just by clearing the area on the other side of it.”
“Maybe an equivalent of a nuke is needed here,” said Nick. “I can’t believe that I am saying that.”
“It’s all right, buddy,” said Harry. “I got this. I know exactly what I need to do.”
“And what’s that?” asked Nick.
“First,” said Harry. He dialed through the four catalogues he had opened, and spent some of his rolling points to get into one called Exotic Weapons early. He flipped through until he found what he thought could work. “I need a weapon that will clear the other side of the field without coming back through the gate.”
“Then I need life support for the few minutes I am going to be over there,” said Harry. He opened two more catalogues and flipped through until he had what he needed toggled up. “Then comes the hard part.”
“Harry, no one crosses through a gate,” said Nick. “They never come back.”
“That’s why this will be the hard part,” said the contractor. He summoned his
equipment. “But we’re going to need a distraction to keep the guys downstairs from coming up here and trying to stop us.”
“How do you think that will happen?,” asked Nick.
“John?,” asked Harry.
“I’m here,” said the teacher. “The xenos are just milling around like they are waiting for something.”
“I think they are,” said Harry. He opened the shipping boxes and went to work arming what he had bought. He needed a cart to move the one, so he paid to have one shipped to him. “I need you to shoot grenades into the bottom floor. Don’t care what you use, but use the whole box.”
“Can do,” said John. “When?”
“Give me one minute,” said Harry. He wrestled the man portable part of his plan close enough to do what he wanted. “I need the distraction. If they come out after you, retreat. The bees will cover for you. And be careful. I don’t want to have to explain to Cat what happened.”
“Right,” said John. “Ready on my end.”
“Almost ready,” said Harry. He slipped the prongs of the cart under the second package. “Start shooting. We want them to stay away from where I am because of what I’m doing.”
Harry threw the first piece of equipment through the gate after activating it. He felt the rush of air as it went to work before it fell through the door across the universe. He got behind the cart, pressed the countdown button, and wheeled his second piece of gear across the threshold. He had to step through himself to push it through.
The bees followed him into the gate with furious buzzing following them.